Opportunities and Challenges in Metaverse for Industry 4.0 and Beyond Applications

Metaverse is the next generation of Internet-based applications and social forms using various cutting-edge technologies, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, 3D holographic avatars, video, cloud computing, etc. It is also defined as a virtual parallel life, i.e., a digital twin of real life, utilizing physical, augmented, and virtual reality to provide a metaphor of real life for its avatars in a shared virtual environment through the Internet. The metaverse is a virtual world that allows users to interact with each other or objects in real-time using their avatars by breaking down all real-world physical obstacles. It has been applied to various domains, such as video games, art, retail, education, healthcare, manufacturing, social, and many more. This paper investigates the Metaverse for Industry 4.0 and beyond applications in terms of opportunities and challenges. It analyses opportunities of the Metaverse for different aspects, from technical, economic, and educational to social. This study also discussed main challenges in Metaverse, such as data security and privacy, decentralization, interoperability, and resource management.

I. Introduction

Over the past decade, several emerging technologies have enabled the blending of the physical and the virtual environments. The metaverse is the most popular one, which blends the next generation of Internet-based applications and social forms [1]. While some traditionalists find the metaverse concept intimidating, the new generation finds it exciting. The metaverse is the first mentioned in fictional literature, i.e., “Snow Crash”, in 1992 [4]. Then it has more recently been conceived as globally accessible and collectively used multi-dimensional (3D) virtual space and computing infrastructure, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space [5].